Algerian Islamists remain with hostages

ISLAMIST gunmen remain with an unknown number of foreign hostages at a gas plant in the Algerian desert, amid uncertainty over what the army is doing to free the captives.

More than 72 hours after the heavily-armed militants staged a deadly raid on the complex, and two days after Algerian special forces launched a botched rescue bid widely condemned as hasty, the situation appeared to be at a standoff.

"There's no change since yesterday; the situation remains the same," an Algerian security official told AFP on Saturday.

On Friday, a security official said troops were trying to reach a "peaceful" end to the crisis, before "neutralising the terrorist group that is holed up in the plant and freeing a group of hostages still being held there."

An official put the number of foreign hostages at 10, but more workers also remain unaccounted for, including at least 10 Japanese and eight Norwegians.

The gunmen, cited by Mauritania's ANI news agency, said they were still holding three Belgians, two Americans, one Japanese and a Briton, although Belgium said there was no indication that any of its nationals were being held.

Amid the virtual news blackout in Algiers, harshly criticised by the local media, world leaders were taking a tough stand on insisting the remaining hostages be freed.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said Washington would "take all necessary steps to protect our people" from the threat of al-Qaeda-affiliated militants in north Africa.

"Whether or not that involves assisting others with military operations, whether it involves developing in a co-operative way operations there, those are areas that I think remain to be decided," he told the BBC.

On Friday, Panetta said Washington was "working around the clock" to secure the safe return of Americans, after at least one was confirmed dead.

A US official said a military aircraft had begun to help evacuate survivors but gave no estimate of the number of US hostages.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a news conference with Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida that Washington remained "deeply concerned about those who remain in danger. Utmost care must be taken to preserve innocent life."

Kishida urged Algeria to place the "utmost priority" on ensuring the remaining hostages' safety.

In Tokyo, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered his government to do everything possible to ensure the safety of those Japanese unaccounted for in what he called "an extremely despicable" incident that "can never be forgiven."

"I would like you to do your best to confirm the safety of the Japanese and rescue them by using every possible means," Abe told top government officials after cutting short a trip to Southeast Asia.

The UN Security Council "condemned in the strongest terms the terrorist attack" and "underlined the need to bring perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice."

Algerian news agency APS quoted a government official as saying the kidnappers, who claimed to have come from Niger, were armed with machine-guns, assault rifles, rocket launchers and missiles.

They belong to a group known as "Signatories in Blood," led by a Algerian Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a former senior al-Qaeda commander in north Africa. The group is demanding an end to French intervention in neighbouring Mali, Mauritania's ANI news agency quoted sources close to Belmokhtar as saying.

Belmokhtar also called for the exchange of American hostages for the blind Egyptian sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman and Pakistani Aafia Siddiqui, jailed in the United States on charges of terrorist links.

But State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said "the United States does not negotiate with terrorists."

Philippine worker Jojo Balmaceda, employed by British oil giant BP which operates the In Amenas gas plant jointly with Norway's Statoil and Sonatrach of Algeria, recounted on Saturday how he escaped.

Balmaceda and three fellow Filipinos were taken at gunpoint as they arrived for work, tied up and thrown into a truck along with Japanese and Malaysian hostages, the GMA network reported in the Philippines.

He escaped when the truck was hit by an explosion but he sustained a gunshot wound to his head which had affected his hearing, the station added.

An official in Manila said 34 Filipinos had been evacuated from the gas field and were on their way home.

The fate of two Malaysians believed to have been caught up in the crisis remains unknown, the foreign ministry said, while three others were safe.

France said two of its nationals had returned safely but it had no word on two more, and Romania said three of its citizens had been freed.